Elite Dangerous has a flight model where your ship behaves like it’s in atmosphere. You even have a throttle/speed “zone” where your ship handles best.
In essence this flight model is a very basic imitation a WW2 era plane, where due to the complex relationship between control surfaces and air speed they had ideal speeds for manoeuvring.
Elite Dangerous doesn’t model any of this using physics it’s all just fixed values and of course there’s no (or negligible) atmosphere in space.
Ever watch The Expanse where they’re going one direction full speed then they flip and burn the other direction? That’s realistic physics even if the engines being used are hand-wavy future tech.
You can do that in Star Citizen, though new players often miss that, as there are a actually two flight models.
The basic flight model is called coupled mode, where your direction of travel is “coupled” to your direction of forward momentum and has “drag” which is your ship slowing itself when you’re not using thrust, due to the chosen mode. This gives you a feeling of atmospheric control similar to Elite Dangerous.
The second mode is called uncoupled and is complete 6 degrees of freedom and your ship will maintain all momentum (it doesn’t slow down when you’re off throttle) allowing manoeuvres like the flip and burn mentioned above. This is very close to how things actually work in space though not perfect.
Oh and because atmospheric flight actually is modelled in Star Citizen, you can’t treat a dog fight in a planets atmosphere the same as a dog fight in space!
Elite Dangerous has a flight model where your ship behaves like it’s in atmosphere. You even have a throttle/speed “zone” where your ship handles best.
In essence this flight model is a very basic imitation a WW2 era plane, where due to the complex relationship between control surfaces and air speed they had ideal speeds for manoeuvring.
Elite Dangerous doesn’t model any of this using physics it’s all just fixed values and of course there’s no (or negligible) atmosphere in space.
Ever watch The Expanse where they’re going one direction full speed then they flip and burn the other direction? That’s realistic physics even if the engines being used are hand-wavy future tech.
You can do that in Star Citizen, though new players often miss that, as there are a actually two flight models.
The basic flight model is called coupled mode, where your direction of travel is “coupled” to your direction of forward momentum and has “drag” which is your ship slowing itself when you’re not using thrust, due to the chosen mode. This gives you a feeling of atmospheric control similar to Elite Dangerous.
The second mode is called uncoupled and is complete 6 degrees of freedom and your ship will maintain all momentum (it doesn’t slow down when you’re off throttle) allowing manoeuvres like the flip and burn mentioned above. This is very close to how things actually work in space though not perfect.
Oh and because atmospheric flight actually is modelled in Star Citizen, you can’t treat a dog fight in a planets atmosphere the same as a dog fight in space!
OK, thats actually cool. Maybe I will try it again just feel it. How I choose this uncoupled mode? It is a config of the game or a mode of the ship?
Just a shortcut, sorry I don’t remember what the default is because I use customised HOTAS controls.
Don’t try decoupled in atmosphere/gravity as… you will be claiming your ship very quickly.